SESSION 8

BILOGICAL SURVIVAL VALUE OF MUSIC

- The biological survival value of music continues to be an enigma.

- Darwin believed that musical ‘calling systems’ evolved into speech, whereas
Herbert Spencer believed that music evolved as a stylized form of speech.
Steven Pinker notes, “Of (all) mental faculties…music…shows the clearest signs
of not being (adaptive)”.
- Yet in all cultures most people enjoy music.
- On the other hand, it takes severe mental retardation to prevent language
acquisition, and musical aptitude ranges from tone deafness to Mozartian
genius independently of other measures of intelligence.

What is music? “The art of combining sounds of voices or instruments to achieve

beauty of form and expression of emotion.”

We see in this definition two elements:

- Objective: music is composed of sounds.
- Subjective: music has to achieve beauty and express emotion.
Not all the sounds around us are music. The question is where do we draw the line?
What for someone is music might not be for someone else.

Edgar Varèse (considered by some the father of electronic music):

“To stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise.
But after all what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an
organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn’t like.”

If music is subjective, can we none the less claim it’s universal?

Is music a “natural kind”, comprehensible within the generalized framework that is
science?

- Many argue that music is not a natural kind.

- The consensual view from within the humanities appears to be that music is
cultural rather than natural.
- Music is viewed as constituted of practices, concepts, and perceptions that are
grounded in particular social interactions and constructions.
- It is argued that there is no extra-cultural locus from which to observe music,
nor extra-cultural meaning to observe. Music is seen as the expression of
discrete, contingent, and socially conditioned factors in respect of which a
generalizable – and hence scientific – account is neither relevant nor possible.
- Even something as intrinsic as tapping your foot with to the beat of music has
proved to vary depending on cultures.
- It seems that music is cultural, variable and particular, and not susceptible to
explanation in general and scientific terms. Yet there are those who argue that
music is, nevertheless, a human universal.
 - Still music’s significance varies according to social context. It involves
multiplicity of reference and meaning.
- The significances of a singular musical activity can vary from individual to
individual.
- Finally, music in general has a further, peculiarly negative, feature; it appears to
have no immediate and evident efficacy.
- Music is universal. It is ubiquitous not only across human societies but across all
members of those societies.
- While it is self-evidently true that the production of ‘music’ in contemporary
western society is in the hands of a specialized class of performers and
composers, musical ability cannot be defined solely in terms of productive
competence; (almost) every member even of our own, highly specialized,
society is capable of listening to and hence of understanding music.
- Music is not just universal across cultures; it appears that everyone has the
capacity to be musical, though this capacity is likely to be realized to different
degrees and in different ways in different cultural and social environments.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31875727

So what is the purpose of music?

Some thoughts:

- While music is bound to the domains of language, auditory scene analysis,

habitat selection, emotion, and motor control, it does no more than exploit the
capacities that have evolved to subserve each of these areas. Music is thus
‘exaptive’, an evolutionary by-product of the emergence of other capacities
that have direct adaptive value.
- Human musicality has had no role in our survival as a species. It derives from
an ‘optimal instinctive sensitivity for certain sound patterns’ that itself arose
because it proved adaptive.
- Music is a human activity that arose to exploit parasitically the operation of a
cognitive capacity to process complex sound patterns discriminable by pitch
variation and rhythm that was originally functional in primitive human
communication but that fell into disuse with the emergence of the modern
vocal tract and the finer shades of differentiation in sound pattern that it
afforded.
- Music exists simply because of the pleasure that it affords; its basis is purely
hedonic.

“Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music
could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually
unchanged”.

“An essential, defining characteristic of the arts is that they serve no practical
function. Accordingly, any music that is created for biological (or even economic)
reasons cannot be considered art.”
MUSIC AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATION

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

In discussing possible evolutionary origins for musical behaviors, the question is not,
“What caused people to make music?” but rather,

- “How might music-making behaviors have escaped the hatchet of natural

selection?” or more precisely,
- “What advantages is conferred on those individuals who exhibit musical
behaviors over those who do not?”

Degrees attending evolutionary speculation:

- Evolutionary theory is plagued by post hoc reasoning and has been used to
defend all sorts of nefarious ideologies, from racism to sexism.
- Philosophers note that evolutionary arguments often lead to the naturalist
fallacy where what is confused with what ought to be.
- In the case of music, there is an undistinguished history of polemical writing
where certain kinds of music have been condemned for being “unnatural”.
- Finally, by focusing on biological issues, one can leave the false impression that
the effects of culture on music are minimal.

Two possible evolutionary views of music’s origins:

- One view is that music is a form of Non-Adaptive Pleasure Seeking (NAPS).

- A second view is that music is an evolutionary vestige.

NAPS Theory of Music (Non-Adaptive Pleasure Seeking)

- Most pleasurable activities, such as eating and sex, have clear links to survival.
- Such activities ultimately stimulate brain mechanisms that are specifically
evolved to reward and encourage adaptive behaviors.
- Once brain mechanisms are in place that permit the experience of pleasure, it
may be possible to stimulate those mechanisms in ways that do not confer a
survival advantage (e.g.: sugars and fat, drug use).
- We call these behaviors NAPS.
- One way to determine whether some pleasure-seeking behavior is adaptive or
non-adaptive is to consider how long the behavior has been around.
- In the long span of evolutionary history, non-adaptive pleasure-seeking
behaviors tend to be short-lived (e.g.: heroin users).
- However, the use of alcohol already suggests how NAPS behaviors can
transform a gene pool.
- If music itself has no survival value (and merely exploits an existing pleasure
channel), then music would be expected to place music lovers at an
evolutionary disadvantage.
- In addition, if music is non-adaptive, then it must be the case that music is
historically recent; otherwise music lovers would have become extinct some
time ago.
 - Although there are evidences that music could precede agriculture, Huron
thinks the answer lies in music an evolutionary vestige.

Music as an Evolutionary Vestige

- Another possibility is that, although music at one time did indeed confer some
survival values, it is now merely vestigial.
- Like the human appendix, at one time this ‘organ’ may have contributed
directly to human survival, but now it is largely irrelevant – a piece of
evolutionary litter. If this view is true, then we would have to ask:
o What advantage did music once confer?
o How have things changed so that music is no longer adaptive?

Some evolutionary theories of music

Of the various proposals concerning a possible evolutionary origin for music, eight
broad theories can be identified:

- Mate selection: in the same way that some animals find colorful or
ostentatious mates attractive, music making may have arisen as a courtship
behavior. For example, the ability to sing well might imply that the individual is
in good health.
- (Sexual Selection as a Variant of the Mate Selection Theory)
- Social cohesion: music might create or maintain social cohesion. It may
contribute to group solidarity, promote altruism, and so increase the
effectiveness of collective actions such as defending against a predator or
attacking a rival clan.
- Group effort: more narrowly, music might contribute to the coordination of
group work, such as pulling a heavy object.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFSlw8LlIw0
- Perceptual development: listening to music might provide a sort of “exercise”
for hearing. Music might somehow teach people to be more perceptive.
- Motor skill development: singing and other music-making activities might
provide (or have provided) opportunities for refining motor skills. For example,
singing might have been a necessary precursor to the development of speech.
- Conflict reduction: in comparison with speech, music might reduce
interpersonal conflict. Campfire talk may well lead to arguments and possible
fights. Campfire singing might provide a safer social activity.
- Transgenerational communication: given the ubiquity of folk ballads and epics,
music might have originated as a useful mnemonic conveyance for useful
information. Music might have provided a comparatively good channel of
communication over long periods of time.
- Safe time passing: in the same way that sleep can keep an animal out of harm’s
way, music might provide a benign form of time passing. Evolutionary biologists
have noted, for example, that the amount of sleep an animal requires is
proportional to the effectiveness of food gathering. Efficient hunters (such as
lions) spend a great deal of time sleeping, whereas inefficient feeders (such as
grazing animals) sleep relatively little. Sleep is thought to help keep an animal
 out of trouble. A lion is more apt to injure itself is it is engaged in unnecessary
activities. As early humans became more effective at gathering food, music
might have arisen as a harmless pastime. (Note, e.g. that human sleep more
than other primates).

Types of evidence

In presenting a case for the evolutionary origins of music, we can consider four types
of evidence:

- Genetic evidence: the best evidence of an evolutionary origin would be the

identification of genes whose expression leads to the behavior in question.
Unfortunately, it is rare for scientists to be able to link particular behaviors to
specific genes. Although behavior-linked genes have been discovered in other
animals (such as fruit flies), no behavior-linked gene has yet been conclusively
established in humans. As in so many other areas, music has attracted a kind of
folklore related to heritability. In some cultures, it is common for people to
assume or believe that musical talent is partly inherited. More recently, work at
the University of California, San Francisco, appears to suggest a genetic
component for absolute pitch.
- Neurological evidence: the existence of specialized brain structures is neither a
sufficient nor a necessary condition for music to be an evolutionary adaptation.
Nevertheless, if stable anatomical brain structures exist for music, then this is
consistent with music arising from innate development rather than being due
solely to a generalized learning.
- Archaeological evidence: since complex evolutionary adaptations arise over
many thousands of generations, we must ask how widespread music is in
biological history? If music originated in the past few thousand years, then it is
highly unlikely to be an evolutionary adaptation. Evolution does not work that
fast. The archaeological record implies that music making likely originated
between 50,000 years ago and a quarter of a million years ago. The evidence
pointing to the great antiquity of music satisfies the most basic requirement for
any evolutionary argument.
- Ethological evidence: are musical behaviors consistent with survival and the
propagation of genes? In order for music to be an evolutionary adaptation,
music-related behaviors must somehow increase the likelihood that the
musical person’s genes will be propagated. One aspect to be considered is the
resources dedicated to music. But just because an animal spends a lot of time
on certain activities does not mean that the activity represents an evolutionary
adaptation. Ethologists must connect the behavior to an explicit evolutionary
account. That is, there must exist a plausible explanation of how the behavior
would be adaptive.

EMOTIONS INDUCED BY MUSIC

- Adults and children readily discriminate musical emotions.

- Sadness is conveyed by quiet, slow, legato articulation, and deviations from
metrical timing.
 - Happiness or joy is conveyed by high-pitched, fast, staccato features, and small
variations from metrical timing.
- However, music appears to express some emotions more precisely than others,
differences between, for example, tenderness and sadness are rather subtle.
Musical structure is not set up to differentiate these emotions so robustly.
- Music can be referential in the sense of having an intended outside meaning
(e.g. it can be about a thunderstorm, a war, or a love story), but this specific
reference to events or things in the world is usually far from transparent to the
listener.
- Music can also come to have meaning, in terms of convention (e.g. particular
turns of phrase in Baroque music may be meaningful for listeners familiar with
these conventions; particular rags may signal particular moods or moral
qualities in Indian listeners educated in this tradition) or through association
with events in the world (e.g. a particular song can signal bedtime for a child;
lovers may associate a particular song with their courtship). However,
conventional and associational referential meanings do not seem to account
for the majority of meaningful responses to music.

Is music about emotion or dies it induce emotion?

Music can convey emotions around two parameters: valence (positive or negative)
and intensity (high or low).

Usually, positive emotions are associated with approach behaviors and negative with
withdrawal behaviors.

However, people often approach sad music, in that they find it beautiful.

If music is simply about emotion, one would not expect listening to music to activate
the autonomic system. Physiological changes should not be evident.

But music seems to induce physiological changes consistent with the processing of
emotional intensity.

- The notion that music elicits emotions appears to be close to the truth.
- There are still questions with respect to why certain feelings (happiness,
sadness) are so easily expressed in musical structure while others (anger) are
much more difficult to express.

LANGUAGE AND MUSIC

The question of a common or separate origin of language and music has been around
for centuries.

Rousseau and Darwin argued for a common origin.

Also the concept that the first basic function of both language and music was to
express emotive meaning through a variation in the intonation of the voice and
rhythm also seems to be an object of consensus (emotional excitement is expresses
though fast, accelerating, and high-registered sound patterns).

Similarities:

- You can divide music and language into segmentation of time (sequential
events, an order) and information (words, or pitches/scales).
- They are ubiquitous in all cultures.
- They are ruled-based systems composed of basic elements (phonemes, words,
notes, and chords) that are combined into higher-order structures (musical
phrases, sentences, topics).
- Similarities of the brain’s response to violations of syntax.
- Children acquire musical and linguistic rules in a similar and effortless way.
- They both generate strong expectancies.

Differences:

- The metric structure is specific and consistent throughout a given musical

piece. In language it’s less specific, more variable.
- Much less building blocks (notes, phonemes) in music than in language.
- Whereas the meaning of words is understood in relation to an extra-linguistic
designated space, music is considered mostly self-referential.

THERPEUTIC USE OF MUSIC

What is Health?

The World Health Organization defines health as: “…a state of complete physical,
mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

- A therapeutic role for music in the treatment of physical and emotional disease
is found in many non-Western cultures.
- “Music healing” is at the root of what, in the 20th century, acquired the name of
“music therapy”.
- Many forms of music healing in tribal cultures are themselves based on
receptive singing, although such singing is often directed toward the spirits
rather than toward the patient per se.
- This is the case in many cultures where disease is attributed to the bad humor
of spirits and demons rather than to physiological causes.
- In such situations, the healer’s singing becomes a means of assuaging angry
spirits rather than directly soothing or helping patients. This occurs in the many
cultures where shamans function as the culture’s music healers, and where
music is used to induce a state of trance in the shaman as a means of
facilitating healing in people.
- Music’s utility in clinical and caregiving situations is well established in the
research literature.
- Music has been used in numerous medical contexts:
o For controlling postoperative pain
o For reducing nausea and vomiting after chemotherapy
o In handling restrained patients, and
 o In decreasing anxiety during ventilatory assistance to name just a few.

Therapeutic Music Services At-A-Glance

Over time, the number of practitioners using music in therapeutic ways has grown and
the ways of offering music have expanded.

The way music is used in therapeutic ways can be divided in 3 ways:

- Music Therapy
o Music therapy means the clinical and evidence based use of music
interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic
relationship.
o Music therapists develop an individualized music therapy treatment
plan for the client that identifies the goals, objectives, and potential
strategies of the music therapy services appropriate for the client using
therapy interventions.
o These interventions may include music improvisation, receptive music
listening, song writing, lyric discussion, music and imagery, music
performance, learning through music, and movement to music.
o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_H3MVZPtAA
o theoretical framework: varied & multiple theoretical frameworks
employed (e.g. cognitive, humanistic, behavioral, psychodynamic, etc.)
o client Assessment Process (Treatment Planning, Documentation, Re-
assessment Process) is formalized and standardized.
o Varied practice settings including: psychiatric and medical hospitals,
rehabilitative facilities, outpatient clinics, day care treatment centers,
Veterans facilities, agencies serving developmentally disabled persons,
community mental health centers, drug and alcohol programs, senior
centers, nursing homes, hospice programs, wellness centers,
correctional facilities, halfway houses, schools, military bases, and
private practice.
o Population served: Neonatal (NICU) services, special education & early
intervention, physical or sensory impairment, mental health &
psychiatric, developmental disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, well
adults & wellness, medical inpatient, dementia & Alzheimer’s,
neurologic disorder, rehabilitation & habilitation services, hospice and
palliative care.
o Music Therapy and autism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW-
kALtsbiQ
o Music Therapy and Alzheimer’s Disease (the iPod Project):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW-kALtsbiQ
o Qualifications: persons who complete a bachelor’s degree or higher in
music therapy, or its equivalent, from a program approved by the
American Music Therapy Association within an accredited college or
university including minimum of 1,200 hours of clinical training, are
eligible to sit for the national board certification examinations offered
by the Certification Board for Music Therapists.
 o There is a lot of debate about what it is about music that is healing. It
could be a process of “entertainment” (when two clocks with
pendulums are very close to each other and they synchronize). Humans
are always entertaining or synchronizing with each other, both in
positive and negative ways (e.g. if you are agitated and someone beside
you is very calm, you might entrain with the calm rhythm).
o Opera singer who can sing a high note and break glass. That is an
example of sound energy moving matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZD8ffPwXRo
o Sound touches matter. When you hear something, it is not just through
the ears. It literally touches your body, so it could have an effect on the
immune system and brain.
- Therapeutic Music
o Therapeutic music is based on the science of sound. It is live acoustic
music specifically tailored to the patient’s immediate needs. A
therapeutic musician is a graduate of an accredited training program
who uses the inherent healing elements of live music and sound to
enhance the environment for patients in healthcare settings in order to
facilitate the healing process.
o Therapeutic music is music that helps the process of healing and
supports movement towards health. Therapeutic music supports health
and the process of healing primarily through the principles of resonance
and entrainment, in which the individual is supported by the elements
of music: rhythm, harmony, melody and tonal color.
o A therapeutic musician enhances the environment by applying
therapeutic music.
o The purpose is not to entertain or to give a performance.
o The intention is to promote healing – as opposed to curing – by bringing
the body, mind and spirit into balance. Healing is a holistic view of
human health pertaining to all aspects of the human being – mental,
physical, emotional and spiritual wholeness – not just the physical
aspect. Curing is done by doctors and mainstream, or allopathic,
medicine.
o The music affects the whole-person because the effects are four-fold:
 Physical
 Emotional
 Mental
 Spiritual
o Music is often provided one-on-one in practice.
o Benefits can include, but are not limited to:
 Distraction
 Disassociation from the present situation
 Refocus of attention
 Altering the sense of time
 Reprieve from the present situation
 Relieving anxiety of the critically ill
 Reducing stress and blood pressure of the chronically ill
  Augmenting pain management
 Bridge for communication between loved ones
 Relaxing, anti-stress:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDd2i6LeiuQ
 Relieving body and mental tension of the pre-surgery patient
 Accelerating physical healing of post-surgery and injured
patients
 Easing the birth delivery process
 Aiding mental focus in Alzheimer’s patients by lifting and
clearing the consciousness
 Assisting the dying by facilitating ease in the transition process
o The therapeutic musician is trained to assess the patient’s behavior,
condition and communication ability in order to meet the patient’s
immediate needs with appropriate therapeutic music.
o Music may be familiar or unfamiliar, structured (such as written tunes)
or improvised, using rhythmic or arrhythmic tempos, depending on the
situation and the patient’s needs.
o In working with the mood of a patient, the therapeutic musician may
play music which falls into three types: merry, sad and soothing.
o Playing in different modes (Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian and Aeolian) is
also helpful in meeting the patient’s needs.
- Music Thanatology
o Therese Schroeder-Sheker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gppfjwu4xXk
o Music thanatology is a professional field within the broader sub-
specialty of palliative care. It is a musical/clinical modality that unites
music and medicine in end of life care.
o This music can help to ease physical symptoms such as pain,
restlessness, agitation, sleeplessness, and labored breathing. It offers an
atmosphere of serenity and comfort that can be profoundly soothing
for those present. Difficult emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, and
grief can be relieved as listeners rest into a musical presence of beauty,
intimacy, and compassion.
o Since antiquity, music and medicine have a long tradition as allies in
healing. Music-thanatology is a contemporary field rooted in that same
tradition.

SESSION 9
MUSIC AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATION

Music and Social Bonding

- Like language, music might have originated as an adaptation for social bonding,
more particularly, as a way of synchronizing the mood of many individuals in a
larger group. That is, music helps to prepare the group to act in unison.
- The contracts between Asperger-type autism and Williams syndrome is also
striking. On the one hand we have a group of people whose symptoms include
 high sociability linked with high musicality. On the other hand, we have a group
of people whose symptoms include low sociability often linked with low
musicality.
- An important question to ask is how precisely music might bring about social
bonding.
- Neurophysiologist Walter Freeman has proposed a pertinent theory related to
the hormone oxytocin, which is released i.a., in associated with trauma and
ecstasy, childbirth, following sexual orgasm, and while listening to music.
- This has important repercussions for instances of peer-group bonding and
social identity. If Freeman is correct, there would be good neurophysiological
reasons for lovers to enjoy music while courting, for union members to sing
while on the picket line, for religious groups to engage in collective music
making, for colleges to promote alma mater songs, and for warriors to sing and
dance prior to fighting.

MUSIC AND THE BRAIN

A couple of curious things about our brain and music:

- Our brain is able to process a lot of information just from a disorganized

mixture of molecules beating against the eardrum.
- This is done through a process of feature extraction (extracting basic, low-level
features from the music, decomposing the signal into information about pitch,
timbre, spatial location, loudness, reverberant environment, tone durations,
and the onset times for different notes and for different components of tones).
- Then the higher-level centers receive information of what has been extracted
and they try to predict what will come next in the music.

Music is processed both in the left and right hemisphere:

 - The overall contour of melody – melody shape, ignoring intervals – is processed
in the right hemisphere, as is making fine discrimination of tones that are close
together in pitch.
- The left hemisphere is involved in naming aspects of music (naming the song, a
performer, an instrument, an interval…).
- Also tracking the ongoing development of a musical theme (thinking about key
and scales and whether a piece makes sense or not).
- Musical training appears to have the effect of shifting some music processing
from the right to the left hemisphere, as musicians learn to talk about and think
about music using linguistic terms.

Perceptual Completion Applies to Music

- With or without musical training, our musical experience plays a fundamental

role in the development of our musical preferences.
- Music is organized sound, but the organization has to involve some element of
the unexpected or it is emotionally flat and robotic.
- The appreciation we have for music is intimately related to our ability to learn
the underlying structure of the music we like – the equivalent to grammar or
spoken or signed languages – and to be able to make predictions about what
will come next.
- Composers take into account the filling in phenomenon.
- This also explains the robustness of music in the face of transformations and
distortions of basic elements (changes in pitches, tempo, instrumentation,
minor/major).
- Composers imbue music with emotion by knowing what our expectations are
and then very deliberately controlling when those expectations will be met,
and when they won’t.
- The emotion we experience from music are the result of having our
expectations artfully manipulated by a skilled composer and the musicians who
interpret that music.

How Do We Bond to Music

- Motor path: Rhythm, Groove

o The rhythm track causes us to move and it can feel so good that an
emotion is generated.
- Emotion path: Melody, Harmony
o Chord changes, progressions, and harmony can meet or violate musical
syntax.
o Violation of expectancies gives rise to emotion. Meeting expectancies is
also pleasant because humans and other animals like to know what is
going to happen.
o Balance the novelty and the familiarity in your work for optimal effect,
but be aware that every listener has different expectations.
- Cognitive path: Lyrics
o Most complex pathway, last to get activated.
- Expectations are based on musical schemas elaborated, amended, and
 otherwise informed every time we listen to music.
- The principal schemas we develop include a vocabulary of:
o Genres and styles
o Eras (1970’s vs 1980’s music)
o Rhythms
o Chord progressions
o Phrase structure (e.g.: number of measures per phrase)
o Length of songs
o What notes typically follow what (e.g.: gap fills).
- Young children start to listen to show a preference for the music of their
culture by age 2. At first children tend to like simple songs (clearly defined
themes, chord progressions resolving in predictable ways, etc.).
- Teenage is the turning point for musical preferences, but it’s at 10-11 years
when children start to take on music as a real interest.
- Around 14, the wiring of our musical brain approaches adult-like levels of
completion.
- it’s interesting how people with Alzheimer’s can remember songs of their teen
years (around 14 years).
- There does not seem to be a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music, but
most people have formed their tastes by the age of 18 or 20.
- The reason could be in people being in general less open to new experiences as
the age.
- When we are young and in search of our identity, we form bonds or social
group with people we believe we have something in common with. Music is
one of these social bonding vehicles.

The Balance Between Simplicity and Complexity

- The balance between simplicity and complexity in music also informs our
preferences. However, complexity is an entirely subjective concept.
- Here, too, schemas inform our cognitive models and expectations. Simplicity
and complexity relate to familiarity, and familiarity is just another word for a
schema.
- When a musical piece is too simple we tend not to like it, finding it trivial. When
it is too complex, we tend not to like it, finding it unpredictable.
- Our concept of simplicity or complexity varies with age (as we grow we look for
bigger musical challenges).
- Also, with the familiarity or unfamiliarity with the structure (every genre’s own
set of rules and form).
- If you can’t figure out what is going on in the first minute or so of the piece, you
may find yourself wondering you will start wondering if the payoff will justify
the effort you spend trying to sort it all out.
- Previous experiences, and whether the outcome of that musical experience
was positive or negative.
Social Influence in Determining Preferences

- People are inherently social

- They find value in listening to the same music that other people is listening to:
Network Economics.
- They adapt their tastes to fit into a social group: Water Cooler Effects.
- Offer is overwhelming. Popularity of a product helps people decide.
- All this generates a self-reinforcing process. Success at one level breeds
success at a higher level and growth is exponential.

Mass Markets and Niche Markets

Predicting Hits

- If “superstar” cultural products – The Beatles, Harry Potter, Star Wars – are
somehow different from all the other products in ways that are obvious to
audiences, one might expect that these same differences would be evident to
the producers, publishers, and executives responsible for deciding which
projects to support and which to reject.
- However, attempts to predict hits routinely fail.
- It is estimated that major record labels lose money on 90% of the artists they
sign, and similar, but slightly slower, failure rates are estimated for other
 cultural products (Vogel, 2004).

If hits are different in some way, why do experts have such difficulty in identifying
these products ahead of time?

- The inequality and unpredictability of success, both group-level properties,

arise from a process of social influence at the individual level.
- Preferences are neither exogenous nor stable, but are in fact “constructed” by
a variety of features of the decision context itself.
- They are influenced by the observed actions of others, as well as by
psychological features of the decision context, such as framing, anchoring, and
availability.

Two broad insights that are relevant to social influence in cultural markets:

1. There are simply too many products for individuals to consider. As no one can
possibly consider all of these products, a natural heuristic for dealing with this
choice overload is to assume that the popularity of products is somehow a
signal of their quality, a phenomenon sometimes called observation learning.
2. People may benefit from coordinating their choices with others; that is, by
listening to, reading, or watching the same things, friends, and even strangers,
construct common points of interest around which they can interact, thereby
fostering notions of commonality and community (cultural goods are crowd or
mob goods; their value is enhanced the more people you share the experience
with).

Popular products will tend to become more popular, leading to “cumulative

advantage” or “rich-gets-richer” dynamics.

The question is to what extent does social influence determine our preferences?

- This is difficult. Imagine, for example, trying to convince a Harry Potter –

obsessed friend that the book’s success was the results of a cumulative
advantage process and that the book could have just as easily been a flop (as
was predicted by the eight publishers who passed on it).
- That fan could easily counter that the success of Harry Potter had nothing to do
with luck, but stemmed directly from its attributes, which although not what
experts in children’s book publishing had anticipated, must have been “what
people wanted”.

Social Influence in Determining Preferences

Salganik and Watts’ experiments test:

- If social influence plays a role in the individual consumption of music:

o To what extent the strength of the influence affects consumption.
o What happens if the information is manipulated.

Salganik and Watts: Experiments 1 and 2

 - Participants in both experiments had access to 48 songs by unsigned artists and
they could listen to and download every song.
- Participants were randomly assigned to two types of groups, one type with 8
groups, where there was some sort of social influence, and another one
independent of social influence.
- The participants assigned to the social influence group had access to the
numbers of times each song had been downloaded by previous participants.
- The participants assigned to the independent group did not have access to that
information. In the first experiment songs were presented in a 16x3 grid not
sorted by popularity, while in the second experiment, the songs were
presented in a single-column format sorted by popularity.
- In the independent condition of both experiments, the songs were presented in
the same format, but without any information about popularity and in a
random order.

Conclusions

- Success is determined by two factors:

o The underlying appeal to the song itself
o The noise that results from the interdependence of decision making
(social influence).
- Social influence is responsible for:
o Increased inequality
o Increased unpredictability
- The stronger the social influence, the stronger the effect.
- This finding exhibits a paradox: on the one hand, by revealing the existing
popularity of songs to individuals, the market provides them with real, and
often useful, information; but on the other hand, if they actually use this
information, the market inevitably aggregates less useful information.
- This result, which is analogous to “information cascades” in economics
suggests, in turn, that social institutions that make us aware of the behavior of
 others – The New York Times bestseller list, the Billboard album charts, and
lists of top-grossing movies – do provide a useful service to individuals, but only
at the cost of increasing the overall inequality and unpredictability of the
markets themselves.

SALGANIK AND WATTS’ EXPERIMENT 3

What do you think happened in the two inverted social influence worlds?

Did quality prevailed and did “good” songs go back to the top of the rank and “bad”
songs to the bottom or not?

- The final rankings of almost all songs seem to be permanently affected by the
inversion, where songs that were promoted by the inversion tended to do
better in the long run, and songs that were initially demoted tended to do
worse.
- Thus, in the experiment, the manipulation of market information, combined
with a process of social influence, seemed to lead to long-term changes in the
popularity of songs.
- Another results obtained from the data was that almost all songs, considered
individually, did experience some effect on long-term popularity as a
consequence of the inversion. However, these effects were not strong enough
for the inversion to lock in at the level of the entire market.
- Success of the very “best” songs was essentially unaffected, even though these
were typically the most severely penalized by the inversions. This tendency for
the highest appeal songs to recover their original ranking coupled with the
tendency for lower appeal songs to maintain at least some of the benefits of
the inversion prevented the songs from either locking in to their inverted
ordering or returning to their pre inversion state.
- One could argue that any individual band (or their record label) could expect to
 benefit by artificially inflating their perceived popularity, regardless of their
true appeal or the strategies of the other bands; thus all bands have a rational
incentive to manipulate information.
- However, the experiment shows that subjects in the inverted worlds left the
experiment after listening to fewer songs and were less likely to download the
songs to which they did listen, because they were most often exposed to songs
of lower appeal.
- While bands (or labels rather) may have a rational incentive to manipulate
information, when too many labels employ this strategy, the correlation
between apparent popularity and appeal is lowered, leading to the unintended
consequence of the market as a whole contracting, thereby causing all bands to
suffer collectively.
- We would be facing a situation of a possible tragedy of the commons.
(situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting
independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the
common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their
collective action).

THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS

PERSONALITY AND MUSIC PREFERENCES

How much importance do individuals place on music?

how much do people believe music preferences reveal about their own and others’
personalities?

There is a clear underlying structure to music preferences. Four interpretable factors

were identified that capture a broad range of music preferences:

- Reflective and Complex: the genres loading most strongly were blues, jazz,
 classical, and folk music – genres that seem to facilitate introspection and are
structurally complex. Positively correlated with:
o Openness
o Verbal ability
o Intelligence
o Liberalism
o Inventiveness
o Active imagination
o High regard for aesthetic experiences
o Fans not inclined to be socially dominant or athletic
- Intense and Rebellious: defined by rock, alternative, and heavy metal music –
genres that are full of energy and emphasize themes of rebellion. Positively
related with:
o Openness to new experiences
o Athleticism
o Intelligence
o Verbal ability
o Curiosity
o Risk-taking
o Fans not inclined to be neurotic or disagreeable
- Upbeat and Conventional: defined by country, sound track, religious, and pop
music – genres that emphasize positive emotions and are structurally simple.
Positively correlated with:
o Extraversion
o Agreeableness
o Conscientiousness
o Conservatism
o Attractiveness
o Athleticism
o Fans not inclined to be highly verbal, socially dominant, politically
liberal, or open to new experiences
- Energetic and Rhythmic: defined by rap/hip-hop, soul/funk, and
electronica/dance music – genres that are lively and often emphasize the
rhythm. Positively correlated with:
o Extraversion
o Agreeableness
o Talkative
o Liberalism
o Attractiveness
o Athleticism
o Fans not inclined to be socially dominant or politically conservative
MUSIC AND STEREOTYPES

Music is a vehicle for self-expression

- People wear T-shirts of their favorite acts

- Decorate rooms with music related pictures and artwork
- Blare music loudly where it will be heard by others
Two types of information that individuals may be communicating through their music
preferences:

- They may be conveying information about their personal qualities (aspects of

their personality or personal identity). For example, sensation seeking people
tend to listen to intense music (rock, metal, punk), extraverts prefer party
music, antisocial listen to styles that emphasize rebellion (metal, rap,
alternative).
- They may also be communicating their membership to a particular group.
Music serves as a badge expressing shared similar attitudes, values, beliefs,
social class.
- Whether to communicate information about personal qualities or membership
in a particular group (or both), using music in the service of self-expression
clearly could reveal a wide variety of information about who a person is.
- Music-preference information can therefore influence how an individual is
perceived and genre-specific stereotypes may be one of the perceptual
processes underlying those impressions.
- The following questions can be asked:
o Are there shared stereotypes about people who listen to similar music?
o What is the content of such stereotypes?
o Are these stereotypes accurate?

(PICTURES)

- There is strong evidence for the uniqueness of each of the music stereotypes.
- The specific stereotypes associated with the genres are very different from one
another.
- There seem to be robust and specific stereotypes associated with different
music genres.
- Individuals appear to agree considerably about the personalities, personal
qualities, values, and alcohol and drug preferences of the different fans.

Are the music stereotypes accurate?

- Overall, many of the music stereotypes contain a kernel of truth.

- However, they vary in their degree of validity.
- Stereotypes associated with the religious, country, classical and jazz music
genres displayed highest validity.
- Those associated with pop, rap, and soul were not valid (mainstream genres?)
- Also, the validity of the stereotypes varies by construct.
- Stereotypes associated with the reflective and complex dimension are most
valid, followed by the upbeat and conventional, and intense and rebellious
dimensions.
- Very few of the stereotypes in the energetic and rhythmic dimensions reached
the researchers’ validity benchmark.

What are the beliefs about the association between psychological characteristics and
music preferences based on?
 - The links that individuals perceive between music preferences and
psychological qualities are very likely influenced by their own personal
experiences with music, social interactions and the media.
- Exposure to popular media is another likely variable that influences which
psychological characteristics are ascribed to fans of different styles of music.

MUSIC PREFERENCES AND INTERPERSONAL

PERCEPTION

Percentage of participants who talked about

music versus the mean percentage of
participants who talked about all the non-music
categories combined in on-line getting-
acquainted conversations across 6 weeks.

Music is the most common topic in conversations among strangers given the task of
getting acquainted.

Why was talk about music so prevalent?

- People seem to be able to form consensual and accurate impressions on the

basis of other people’s music preferences.
- Music preferences are related to people’s personalities, and those observations
tend to be valid and different from information obtained in other contexts.

MUSIC PREFERENCES

The studies conducted by Rentfrow and Gosling focus on very specific groups
(American college students for the most part).

The question is whether there are similar structures underlying music preferences
across different groups (different ages, different origins, etc.).

One clue can be found in differences/similarities in personality dimensions (e.g.: brand

personality dimensions).

BRAND PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS

(Pics)

- Brand personality dimensions common to both Spain and the United States:
o Sincerity, excitement, and sophistication.
- Non-shared dimensions:
o Spain: Passion
o US: Competence and Ruggedness
- Brand personality dimensions common to both Japan and the US:
 o Sincerity, excitement, competence, and sophistication
- Non-shared dimensions:
o Japan: Peacefulness
o US: ruggedness

MUSIC PREFERENCES

- Renrfrow and Gosling conclude that the four music-preference dimensions they
refer to might not be found among groups of different ages and origins.
- However, even though music genres come and go, there may be a finite
number of music-preference dimensions that satisfy or reflect certain
psychological needs.
- In other words, regardless of the time period or culture, there may be a limited
number of styles of music that cluster together to form Reflective and Complex,
Intense and Rebellious, Upbeat and Conventional, and Energetic and Rhythmic
music dimensions.
- Thus, even if the specific structure identified in their research is not universal, a
good theory of musical preferences should be able to explain how, when, and
why the structures might differ.

SESSION 10
MUSIC AND IDENTITY

Identity is an individual’s sense of him or herself. However, it also has a social

component – there is no identity in a void.

Indeed, identity within a group, or in reaction to a group is fundamental to a person’s

perception of themselves and how they are perceived by others.

Three fundamental aspects of identity:

- Self-perception as a distinct and unique individual

- Perception of oneself as part of a particular group or set of groups, or/and as
distinction from other groups.
- Other’s perception of you as both unique individual and also as a part of one or
more groups (or distinct from other groups) at any time, or at different times.

National Anthems and other Forms of National Assertion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjGi3komO_c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uCRdZiuil0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE_jRUbPXx8

Music in Sports Events

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N51jWNsW3F8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ojs5vI6AxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JphKPhW_m68
 - The sociology of culture is premised on the notion that boundaries between
aesthetic genres correspond to social boundaries between groups.
- One of the major mechanisms by which such correspondence operates is that
groups claim genres as their own and tie their group identities to the aesthetic
standards of “their” genre.
- Homology: the notion that the boundaries between cultural forms align with
the boundaries between groups.
- Different audiences have preferences for different artistic and musical genres,
and conversely those genres often help constitute boundaries between groups.
- High and low art are perhaps the clearest example. Not only is classical music
preferred more by upper-class audiences, but the consumption of such culture
signals upper-class status, creating a social boundary between upper- and
lower-class groups.
- Cultural genres create boundaries between racial, gender, age, national, sexual
orientation, and other groups.
- Cultural capital is not only a quality that individuals use for personal
advancement but also a means by which groups use cultural distinctions and
knowledge to advance collectively by erecting invidious social boundaries.
- Thus, groups adopt an aesthetic identity, the appropriation of a cultural
boundary to solidify a group boundary. They adopt an aesthetic standard to
define an invidious distinction that marks us vs. them. Identification with a
group becomes measured by adherence to particular aesthetic standards.
- Aesthetic identity does not mean that every member of a group embraces the
aesthetic standards attributed to the group. Not all whites like country and
western any more than all African Americans enjoy soul music.
- But people recognize that they are members of groups that are associated with
particular genres. Individual African Americans may not savor jazz, but they
often take pride in it.
- The development of aesthetic identities is a social construction more than a
matter of individual tastes.
- The construction of genres often involves the erection of boundaries between
groups. (African American music and white music were pitted against each
other. Youth culture is pitted against the older generation).
- Groups become more and less identified with particular genres as “their” music
over time.
- A good example is folk music.

What is folk music? (pueblo)

- It’s the name that outsiders give to vernacular music that “the folk” have been
making all along.
- Folklorists portray it as the music of a national people, part of an ancient
national culture of the people least touched by modernity: the rural poor.
- English scholars despaired that the English peasantry had been corrupted by
modernization and declared that the purest form of Anglo-Saxon folk music
was to be found in the unsullied hollows and hills of the American
Appalachians.
- However, the folklorist’s portrait of the rural poor not only misrepresented
 their musical tastes, but helped racialize American vernacular music in general.
- The music that ordinary people were singing, especially in the South, included
much more than the Anglo-Saxon ballads the folklorists had identified as “folk”.
- While many Southerners did sing old ballads, the larger corpus of vernacular
music was a creolized synthesis of European and African influences.

Lead Belly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6yCEsDsGx4

- Despite the folklorists’ original definition of folk music as “White”, the reality of
creolized vernacular music made it plausible for the second generation of
folklorists, especially those with left wing commitments, to broaden the
definition of folk beyond Anglo-Saxon mountaineers, shifting the aesthetic
identity of folk music to a class rather than a racial axis.
- Many companies sought specialized markets for particular regions or
demographics, with “race records” and “hillbilly records” being two of the
categories that guided their marketing efforts. However, the racial genres of
commercial marketing do not explain why folk music became white. Indeed,
the overt racism of commercial music fortified the polarity of the
folk/commercial dichotomy. Both academic folklorists and leftist advocates of
people’s culture explicitly juxtaposed folk music against commercial music.
Whatever folk music was, it was decidedly anti-commercial.
- For the ballad collectors of the late 1919 and early 1920 centuries folk was a
racially pure nation, unsullied by the ills of modernism.
- For the leftists of the 1930s and 1940s, it was the virtue of the “the people” vs.
the greed and corruption of the capitalists.
- For the youth of the 1960s, it was authenticity vs. the shallowness of
commercialization.
- But the puzzle is why the last revival, spawned in a moment of interracial hope,
became so white.
- Folk music’s “authenticity” as a marginal genre appealed to white middle-
class youth seeking a relatively safe way to distance themselves from the
mainstream.
- The aesthetic identity of folk music as “other” meant that folk music became
“their” music because it helped them imagine themselves as someone other
than who they feared they were: white middle-class consumers.
- What the middle-class youth found aesthetically pleasing about folk music –
its anti-commercial simplicity, its musical purity, its evocation of a dissolving
past – appealed primarily to whites who wanted out of the mainstream more
than African-Americans, who had been excluded.

MUSIC AS CONVEYOR OF POLITICAL MESSAGES

“The modes of music are never distributed without unsettling of the most
fundamental political and social conventions” (Plato, Republic, Book IV)

Historically, a lot of music has been filled with political content. For example:
 - Hip-hop music is historically rooted in the expression of social and political
protest as voiced by urban African-American youth.
- Protest music related to the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights movements in
the US in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Country music is widely laced with overtly patriotic overtones and politically
explicit content.
- But even before that music has been a venue for political expression with
composers as diverse as Beethoven, Wagner, Verdi, and many others.

There are two primary approaches by which music can convey political content:

- Representational:
o The most direct method of linking music with a political perspective.
o It presents a clearly defined political point of view that corresponds
with the composer’s intent with respect to the music.
o It’s normally the consequence of the composer placing explicit political
content into a piece of music (e.g.: a national anthem).
o Usually representational political music is identified as such in relation
to the politics that are contemporary with the life of the composer.
- Associational:
o It’s the result of activities by individuals who are normally not involved
in the original composition of the music.
o Typically, it’s created when someone or some group makes a
connection between a particular piece of music and a political message
or ideology.
o The connection is made as a means of using the music to support a
political agenda (e.g.: Beethoven’s music by the German Nazi Party).
This can happen even if the composer had no affiliation with the
political group or if his/her music had a different message. That is why it
usually happens after the composer’s death.
o But it can also happen that the composition was written for a particular
purpose but ties in well with a related or similar situation or setting.

Alaska and the song: ¿A Quién Le Importa?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnQeexb8bB8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4No3NB7hfM

- The song describes a person who is criticized for being different. The question
and title lyric “Who Cares?” is repeated throughout the song indicating that
criticism does not affect her and she will stay the way she is.
- It was later recognized as a gay anthem by the Spanish language-speaking LGBT
community, even though it did not allude to it at all.

Associational Music and Beethoven

- The use of music to convey political meaning that is addressed directly towards
the masses really begins with the Classical period (aprox. 1750 – 1820).
 - Previously, most music was composed to be played in the courts of the
aristocracy and nobility, as well as in the churches. The social elite paid for the
music to be composed and performed, so the music had to satisfy the interests
of the sponsoring elite.
- Until that point the only music with a political meaning was war-related music.
- The situation would not change until music was being performed in settings
that were attended by more ordinary people: theaters that sold tickets.
- Beethoven exploited the potential of this new venue by composing music that
could appeal directly to the political sensibilities of the masses, or at least the
masses who were sufficiently well off to buy a concert ticket.
- It is a bit of a wonder how Beethoven’s music later became so deeply
politicized given his seemingly erratic political ideas as spread out over his
entire creative life:
o Symphony No.3’s dedication first being dedicated to Napoleon
(attraction to Napoleonic republican ideas), then changed dedication to
Prince Franz Joseph.
o Fidelio returning to the idea of society being preferably ruled by a
redeeming despot.
o Political conflict: republican fervor for revolution vs. ideal of enlighten
rule by a gifted individual (like Maximilian and Joseph Franz).
o He also wrote several pieces to patriotically celebrate the French
defeats (Victoria, Waterloo).
o The post-Napoleonic European politics was a very repressive period, a
time when Beethoven returns to more progressive political leanings.
o The 9th Symphony is the product of this final period in Beethoven’s
political evolution.
o The revolutionary potency is such – it encourages the masses to take
their destiny into their own hands – that when it was first performed in
1824 in Vienna, the audience gave five standing ovations, ultimately
silenced by the police commissioner who aggressively ordered quiet.

After his death his music evolved into associational political music at various periods of
time:

- During the II Reich: Wagner appropriated the music and image of Beethoven
and re-defined him as a revolutionary and nationalizing Germanic hero.
- Bismarck and his associates also found Beethoven to be a useful
accompaniment and numerous governmental activities helped to accent the
growing myth of this Germanic hero and promote the belief of his music
inspiring heroic military deeds.
- His music was also played extensively during WWI in connection with war-
related functions and to support propaganda of German superiority over the
Western peoples (notably the French).
- Due to the deep affection that Germans had for his music – it represented
something cultural that connected them to a heritage that extended beyond
the temporal boundaries -, during the Weimar Republic, the basic strategy
used by all political parties was to develop and maintain an association
between Beethoven’s music and their own political themes. This resulted in
 various versions of the “Beethoven’s Myth”.
- During the Nazi period a significant portion of the music of Beethoven,
Bruckner and Wagner was incorporated into the Nazi propaganda. Beethoven
was the central focus of their efforts to establish political music that would
enhance their overall agenda.
- His image was “purified” and was presented as a Nazi role model.
- After WWII, Germany was divided. In West Germany there was a deep
rejection of the Nazi-derived Beethoven myth. This led to an abandonment of
the attempt to use Beethoven for political purposes.
- In East Germany, on the other hand, while rejecting the Nazi’s Beethoven myth,
the GDR was nonetheless able to utilize the basic principles of myth-making to
shape the appreciation of Beethoven’s music into a leftist and revolutionary
mold. This was considered distasteful by West Germans.
- Yet perhaps the most potent use of Beethoven and his music as symbolic of
German culture and politics arrived with the end of communism in the East.
- First with the selection of Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim of the 7th
Symphony in a concert that took place days after the collapse of the wall in
Berlin.
- And second, when Leonard Bernstein led an event with dual performances in
East and West Berlin on 23 December 1989 of the 9th Symphony, giving
Beethoven and his music an unambiguous political meaning of freedom and
liberation.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IInG5nY_wrU

Political Manifesto Music

- Creators of political manifesto music use their music to express a perspective

on politics, society, or even the human condition.
- But political manifestos are typically intended to be catalytic documents that
help to create political change by virtue of the affect that they have on readers
and listeners. So political manifesto music may play the activist role as an agent
that triggers significant change in our political world.
- Bob Marley:
o Marley used his lyrics to convey political message aimed largely at the
poor, under-represented, and often illiterate masses.
o He also tied reggae to a politicized view of Rastafarian spirituality. Some
Rastafarian beliefs are relevant:
 Belief in the divinity of Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari)
 Characterization of white-dominated society as Babylon (or
specific manifestations, like the police)
 Centrality of Africa (repatriation, although maybe just in spiritual
terms)
 The use of marijuana (religious plant) as an aid to discussion and
“reasoning”
 Dressing in particular ways (dreadlocks)
 The following of a specific “organic diet” with no pork
 Particular system of language (the use of I words)
 Division of gender roles and elevation of the woman as the
 “queen”
o Bob Marley’s primary mission is to help people break free of the
Babylon system of thought.
o While the role of the messiah, prophet, or teacher is to help people
wake from the Babylonian mentality, it is nonetheless the responsibility
of the people to rebel and finally free themselves from this
imprisonment.
o The use of marijuana to help transcend Babylon’s control of the
personality.

Protest Music

- The dominant factor that influenced the genesis of the contemporary genre of
political protest music in the US (and in Europe) is the political tumult
associated with the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights Movement in
the 1960s and 1970s.
- The Beatles transformed themselves from a romantic “boy band” into a truly
revolutionary musical powerhouse. They were followed by the Rolling Stones,
Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc.
- They introduced the value of questioning authority and the practical matters of
how to do it, including the language to use.
- Those were years pregnant with the seeds of change. And the period was not
without victories for those who sought change:
o Fall of Nixon through charges of office misuse
o The withdrawal from the Vietnam War
o The end of racial segregation in the Southern States in America and the
beginning of a long delayed process of racial integration.
- This was a period that defined the potential for political protest music.
- Vietnam War
o Musicians had a captive audience during those Vietnam War years:
young people and their loved ones who were going set to fight – and
possibly die – in a war no one really understood.
o A new generation of Americans no longer felt comfortable with the idea
of blindly trusting their national political leadership.
o Before the war, rock&roll was merely an extension of R&B. with the
war, rock, folk, and their derivatives were forged into sophisticated
mediums of protest.
o Also, in this evolutionary sense, it is impossible to separate the current
protest genres of rap and modern rock from the events in the Vietnam
War.
o The Vietnam War enabled political protest music to evolve to a state of
sophistication that it otherwise could never have achieved.
o Even racially driven protest music was raised to a new level of potency
by the mainstream acceptance of the connection between protest
content and contemporary music.

Is this truly protest music if Jimi Hendrix does not explicitly shout that he opposes to
war?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjzZh6-h9fM

Types of protest music:

- Calls for peace (e.g. “Give Peace a Chance” by Lennon and McCartney or
“Imagine”)…and warnings against taking protest too far (“Revolution”);
- Psychological portraits of profound and personal inner conflict (Bob Dylan’s
“Blowing in the Wind”, “The Times They Are A-Changing”).

Other important examples of protest music outside the US:

- Chile (Víctor Jara, who was then arrested, tortured and executed, Sting’s “They
Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)” on the pain of the widows);
- Northern Ireland (U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday”)

“And let me tell you something. I’ve had enough of Irish Americans who haven’t been
to their country in 20 or 30 years come up to me about “Resistance” or “Revolution”
back home. And the Glory of Revolution. And the Glory of dying for the Revolution.
F@#k the Revolution! They don’t talk about the glory of killing for the Revolution.
What’s the glory of taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his
wife and his children? Where’s the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day Parade of
old-age pensioners?...”

Music and Civil Rights

- Gospel (“No Segregation in Heaven”)

- Pop and R&B:
o Certain African-American musicians also focused on anti-war music
(“War” recorded by The Temptations, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going
On”).
o “What’s Going On” was one of the first politically motivated songs of
Motown. The label wanted to appeal the white middle class and tried to
stay out of politics.
o But Stevie Wonder took the baton (“Livin’ for the City”, “You Haven’t
Done Nothing”).
- Soul:
o Although James Brown was a conservative Republican, he recorded “Say
It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”.
o Sly and the Family Stone (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”).
o However, many of the people who wrote soul songs were whites who
focused more on romantic issues.

Other Forms of Political Use of Music

- Music and Nationalism: particularly important during the period of European

nation-building. Franz Liszt in Hungary, Giuseppe Verdi in Italy (Resorgimento
on Italian political unification), Jean Sibelius in Finland, etc.
- Labor Music: Notably Joe Hill and the Industrial Workers of the World
(Woddlies), who would have an enormous influence on musicians such as
 Woody Guthrie.

THE MUSIC COMMUNITY TAKES STANCE

- While some individual artists have always taken stance in favor or against
certain political movements, in the 70’s, and specially the 80’s, they start to act
as a community to defend certain causes.
- If at the beginning, it may have started as charity and awareness raising events,
like Concerts for Bangladesh (organized by George Harrison), it soon became
political with Rock Against Racism.
- After that, the music community realized their power to convey certain
messages if acting in a united front.
- Several initiatives took place.
- (List of videos)

SESSION 11
THE US FROM A EUROPEAN PERSEPCTIVE

American stereotypes about the US:

- Light to the world.

- Freest, richest, most productive country the world has ever seen.
- Greatest military power.
- Champion of human rights.
- Fights against evil (Communism, Terror, Islam, Socialism, etc.)
- Land of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all.
- Favored by God.

European stereotypes about Americans:

- Endlessly aggressive military power.

- Hypocritically speaks of democracy and freedom while supporting dictators and
overthrowing elected governments.
- Arrogant, crassly materialistic, crime-ridden, vulgar, ignorant, racially unjust.
- Trigger-happy cowboys.
- The world’s only avowed practitioner of torture.
- Economically exploitative, imperialistic, and intolerant of other cultures.

2009 Survey on Attitudes About U.S. Cultural and Political Influence commissioned by
WSJ:
SOFT POWER

What is Soft Power?

The term coined by Joseph Nye, former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard. He defined power as follows:

“The ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes you want.”
Joseph Nye’s Definition of Power

Behaviors Primary Currencies Government Policies

Military Power Coercion Threats Coercive diplomacy

Deterrence Force War

Protection Alliance

Economic Power Inducement Payments Aid

Coercion Sanctions Bribes

Sanctions

Soft Power Attraction Values Public diplomacy

Agenda setting Culture Bilateral and

multilateral
Policies
Diplomacy
Institutions

Definition of Soft Power:

“The ability to achieve desired outcomes through attraction rather than coercion.”

A country’s soft power, according to Nye, rests on three resources:

- Its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad).

- Its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral
authority).
- Its culture (in places where it is attractive to others).
- http://monocle.com/film/affairs/soft-power-survey-2012/
 “The film has come to rank as the very highest medium for the dissemination of
public ignorance.” By Woodrow Wilson.

The Use of Entertainment as a Way to Export American Values, Attitudes and

Modes of Thinking:

Under Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency:

- spreading the “gospel of Americanism” through the Creel Committee.

- Film shipments had to contain 20% “educational matter” (propaganda).
- Any movies that portrayed “false” American values or that conveyed a negative
impressions of the US were banned for export.

After WW II:

- The Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) referred to as the “Little

State Department”.
- The real US State Department insisted that exported Hollywood movies
promote American values.
- McCarthysim and which hunt of suspected Hollywood communists.
- Jack Valenti appointed head of the MPAA.

What about music?

- American jazz music started to become popular in Europe in the 1920’s.

- The Nazi regime denounced jazz as a prime example of “degenerate art”.
 - In the 1950’s Voice of America was broadcasting a jazz show called Music USA,
which became widely popular.
- Also, the State Department began financing world tours of Dizzy Gillespie and
Louis Armstrong.
- But there were mixed feelings regarding the usefulness of jazz to American
foreign policy.

Time Magazine 1956 article on rock n’roll: Music: Rock ‘n’ Roll: “Rock ‘n’ roll is based
on Negro blues, but in a self-conscious style which underlines the primitive qualities of
the blues with the malice aforethought. Psychologists feel that rock ‘n’ roll’s deepest
appeal is to the teener’s need to belong; the results bear a passing resemblance to
Hitler’s mass meetings.”

Frank Sinatra before a US Congressional Committee in 1958: “Rock ‘n’ roll is the most
brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.”

What triggered the collapse of Communism? Television

What kind of TV? MTv  One Planet, One Music!

GLOBALIZATION OF MUSIC

Statement by MTV executives in the 1980’s and 1990’s:

- “Music is the global language. We want to be the global rock ‘n’ roll village
where we can talk to youth worldwide”.
- “This is the first international generation. They wear Levis, shop at Benetton,
wear Swatch watches, and drink Coca-Cola. This is not to say that there aren’t
cultural differences, that the French aren’t different from the Germans. But a
French teenager and a German teenager are much more similar than each
other than they are to their parents.”

GLOBALIZATION (IN GENERAL)

- international trade has grown 12-fold in the past-War period and is expected to
grow 6% annually for the next 10 years.
- In 1947 the average trade tariff on manufactured imports was 47%; by 1980 it
was only 6%; it is set to fall to just 3%.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

How have international trade agreements affected the music industry?

- Deregulation:
o Free movement of goods: low tariffs, no quotas, etc. (import/export of
CDs).
o Freedom of establishment (establish a local branch, buy a local music
company).
o Freedom to provide services (e.g.: make an online music service
 available overseas).
- Regulation:
o Increased international copyright protection.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE: TREATIES

International Copyright Treaties:

- Berne Convention (musical works).

- Rome Convention (performances and sound recordings).
- WIPO Internet Treaties.

International Free-Trade Agreements (under the umbrella of the WTO (World Trade
Organization)):

- GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)

- GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services)
- TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights)

THE CULTURAL DIVERISTY ISSUE

“If the spirit of Europe is no longer menaced by the great totalitarian machines that we
have known how to resist, it may be more insidiously threatened by new masters –
economisme, mercantilism, the power of money, and to some extent, technology.
What is at issue is the cultural identity of nations, the right of each people to its own
culture, the freedom to create and choose one’s images… A society that relinquishes to
others its means of representation, is an enslaved society.” François Miterrand (French
President 1981 – 1995)

- The US dominance in the world movie industry provides the main fuel for these
concerns. Hollywood movies accounted for 64% of revenue across the 15
countries of the EU in 2001.
- From 2001 through 2007, 31 artists have appeared simultaneously on at least
18 countries’ charts in at least one year. 23 of these artists are American-born
or American residents.
- At French insistence – and to Hollywood’s dismay – audiovisual products were
allowed a “cultural exception” under the Uruguay Round of the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), allowing European countries to
maintain import quotas and subsidies to domestic cultural production.
- Europe’s commitment to policies promoting local culture has been reaffirmed
by its 2006 ratification of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity, which
seeks “to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions” and which
reaffirms “the sovereign rights of States to maintain, adopt, and implement
policies and measures that they deem appropriate for the protection and
promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions on their territory.”
- Most European countries subsidize their domestic audiovisual sectors, and
some regulate music as well.
- Some countries require radio stations to devote a certain percentage of their
airtime to domestic artists (e.g.: Canada, France, Australia, Nigeria, Ukraine,
 etc.).
- These quotas have invigorated the local music output.
- But there are some issues regarding their compatibility with international trade
agreements (GATS). New Zealand circumvents GATS prohibition on quotas with
a system of grants for domestic music and radio pluggers.

Arguments in favor of cultural exceptions:

- Cultural products are vehicles for messages that transcend the products’
purely commercial value and market processes will not be capable of fully
capture their value to society.
- They are essential to the expression of a national identity.
- Wide range of domestically produced cultural products is important for cultural
diversity.
- Unfair competition from the dumping of cheap imports.
- Local cultural industries may be eligible for infant-industry protection if the
growth prospects indicate eventual self-sufficiency.

Arguments against cultural exceptions:

- Protection involves market distortion and creates economic inefficiencies by

inhibiting the achievement of gains from trade that arise as a result of
specialization and comparative advantage.
- Protection is a reflection of regulatory capture of a self-interested cultural
lobby.
- Protection is a denial of consumer sovereignty and a deprivation of individual
freedom of choice.
- Openness to cultural imports promotes cultural diversity.
- Cultural protection is simply a cover for broader ideological agendas, such as
anti-Americanism, anti-globalization, etc.

What are the actual threats to cultural diversity?

Economic Cultural

External - Competition from Imposition of cultural

global markets symbols or messages from
- “Dumping” of imported product.
cultural products

Internal - Insufficient Consumer indifference

demand towards local cultural
- Market failure expressions.
- High costs of
production

INTERNATIONAL vs. LOCAL REPERTOIRE

Findings of the Ferreira & Waldfogel paper

- They found that, from 2001 through 2007, 31 artists have appeared
simultaneously on at least 18 countries’ charts in at least one year. 23 of these
artists are American-born or American residents.
- But they looked at sales and trade data, and compared each national
repertoire’s share of trade and world consumption (which included domestic
sales of local artists) with the respective countries’ shares of “world” GDP.
- The consumption data showed that the repertoire with the most
disproportionately large share – Sweden – has a sales share that is 59% above
its country’s world GDP share. The UK is 52% above proportionately with GDP,
and the US is 33% above.
- Looking only at trade, six countries have disproportionately large shares of
world trade: Sweden (3.2 times GDP), Canada (2.2), Finland (2), UK (1.9), New
Zealand (1.4), and the US (1.2). with the exception of the UK and the US, these
are not particularly large countries. The US is by far the largest, and while it
does have a disproportionate share of trade, its share is only 24% above its GDP
share.
- This lead to the first empirical observation: despite widespread concern
about large country dominance of markets for cultural goods, country
repertoires’ shares are roughly proportionate to their sizes, and the US has
neither the most disproportionate share of total consumption nor trade.
- (Graphics)
- The deviation between repertoire shares of world trade and world sales
reflects a deviation from proportionately and, in particular, possible bias in
favor of domestic products.
- Under proportionately, the domestic shares would equal each country’s GDP
shares. Thus, the domestic shares would be larger for larger countries. Indeed,
US and Japan have the largest domestic shares (89.9% and 86.6%).
- However, as it can be seen in the following slide, every country’s domestic
share vastly exceeds its GDP share.
- The repertoires with the highest domestic shares relative to their roles in world
GDP include New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries. Their domestic
shares average nearly 50 times their shares of world GDP. The countries with
the smallest proportional home bias include the US (domestic share 2.3 times
its world GDP share), Germany (4.4), and Australia (6).
- Home bias is by no means unique to the cultural good context: Wei (1996)
documents that an average OECD country “imported” about 2.5 times as much
from itself as from an otherwise similar foreign country. Still, the contemporary
evidence on home bias in popular music shows a striking deviation from
proportionality reflecting a strong preference for domestic repertoires.
- Examining the following slide, we see the importance of two central factors in
the empirical literature on trade in goods, geographic proximity and linguistic
similarity of trading partners.
- Brazil’s repertoire has its largest trade share in Portugal, the only other
Portuguese-speaking country in the sample. France has large import shares in
Belgium and Switzerland (which are nearby and partly Francophone).
- Germany has large shares in other German-speaking countries: Austria and
Switzerland as well as other nearby countries, including the Netherlands and
Scandinavian countries.
- American and Canadian repertoires are especially popular in Canada and the
US, respectively, which share both a language and a border.
- Spain has its most substantial trade shares in Spanish-speaking Chile and
Argentina, as well as geographically adjacent Portugal.
- The next slide depicts each country’s share of the world market since 1960.
- Only two country shares, the US and the UK, are clearly visible. A striking
pattern in this figure is what one might term, “the rise and fall of the British
empire”: The UK repertoire share rises from about 10% in 1960 to a peak of
over 30% in the 1960s (the “British Invasion”). The UK share fell to 20% in 1970,
then rose to a peak of roughly a third of the world market in the mid- 1980s
(the “Second British Invasion”). The UK share has fallen steadily since.
- Music from the US takes up the largest share of the world market, but its share
fell from nearly 80% in 1960 to a low of 40% in the mid- 1980s. since then, the
US share has risen fairly steadily to its current level of nearly 60%. Because
other economies tend to be small relative to the UK and, especially, the US,
their consumption shares are small.
- Repertoire shares of large economies tend to be large simply because of the
size of the economies.
- The next slide shows the consumption shares divided by GDP shares. Under
proportionality, countries’ indices would hover near one and would not vary
much over time.
- In this figure, the US index is close to its proportional share, while the UK index
has, for most of the period, been the highest. In the mid- 1980s the UK
repertoire’s market share was over four times its share of GDP.
- At times, other repertoires have had disproportionate shares: Australia’s ratio
reached 3 in the late 1970s, and Sweden’s ratio passed 3 in the early 1990s.
Canada’s ratio passed 1.5 in the late 1990s. All other countries show ratios
below one.
- Home bias causes world market shares to deviate from trade shares. For
example, because the US and Japan are large markets, their consumption of
domestic artists swells their national repertoires’ shares of world sales.
Concerns about globalization are arguably better documented with national
repertoires’ share of trade, as opposed to total sales.
- The next slide does this, showing that for most of the period – between the mid
1960s and 1990 – UK repertoire had the highest share of world trade, around
40%.
- The UK share has declined steadily since 1990, and the US share, roughly a
third for most of the period, has surpassed the UK share, reaching about 40% in
the past 15 years.
- Relative to GDP, the national repertoires that have occupied disproportionate
shares of world trade over the sample period are those of the UK, Sweden,
Canada, and Australia. While the US index of trade has risen over the sample
period, it has been below its proportional share the entire time. Except in the
early 1960s, the US index has always been below the UK index, usually far
below (see next slide).
- Despite policymaker and popular concern over US dominance, the data show
that increased consumer access to foreign products over the past half century
has not brought about a trend systematically favoring the US repertoire, or
those of large economies generally, relative to smaller economies. Moreover,
despite popular fears, the US is not the most disproportionately dominant
supplier to the world’s popular music market. The contemporary data provided
evidence of a bias in favor of domestic music in every sample country.
- The next slide shows worldwide home bias over time (with the share of
consumption worldwide that is domestic artists). This “overall home share” fell
steadily from the early 1960s until the mid- 1980s.
- As of the mid-1980s – a few years after the introduction of a single worldwide
MTV – it appeared that consumers around the world were losing interest in
their domestic artists. One might at the time have viewed this as a symptom
that preferences were converging across the world. However, the overall home
share has rebounded steadily since the mid-1980s, reversing what might have
appeared ominous in 1985.
Other interesting findings:

- First, while the distance effect was small in the 1960s, it has been larger and
stable since, even as trade costs of various sorts have declined.
- Second, the same-language preference has remained roughly constant over
time.
- Finally, the extent of home bias has risen sharply in the last decade.

Possible explanations for the increase in home bias:

 - Regional splintering of MTV
- The adoption of the Internet
- Growth of domestic radio airplay quotas

The US does not only export music, it exports music styles.

- The 20th century was “America’s Century” due to the US influence around the
globe.
- America was the birthplace to some of the most influential music the world has
seen, but aided by new technologies such as radios and phonographs.
- The most important influence came from African Americans and their musical
culture: spirituals, jazz, blues, swing, soul, R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, rap, hip-hop.

What do these styles have in common?

HOW DID AMERICAN MUSIC BECOME SO POPULAR?

Combination of factors:

- The general appeal of everything American after WWII.

- Many popular American styles of music have a very strong rhythmic base and
rhythms travel well.
- English became the most important language in the world and it’s a language
that works well with American styles of music.
- Like in the US itself, the rebellious nature of new styles.
- Local artists, notably British, adopting (and even besting) American music
styles.

But how did European youngsters get to listen to American music in the first place?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuk8AOjGURE

The role of the Armed Forces Network (AFN):

“We didn’t have the same cultural exchange you had. We didn’t have Black America.
We couldn’t turn our dial and get an absolutely amazing kaleidoscope of music. (In the
UK) now and then, if you were lucky, there was this American Forces Network radio
coming out of Germany. If you were lucky, you could hear Muddy Waters or Little
Richard coming through the waves.”

“Without AFN Munich I would not have become a musician and certainly would not
have been with the Rolling Stones.”

“To hear current releases, you tuned in AFN and hoped that you could catch the title of
something after they played it.”

HOW TO DIVIDE THE WORLD

Most American businesses divide the world into four or five zones:
 - North America
- LATAM (Latin America)
- APAC (Asia Pacific)
- EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)
- ROW (Rest of the World)

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

It’s a theory proposed by political scientist Samuel Huntington in his 1993 Foreign
Affairs article of the same name.

Huntington’s thesis outlines a future where the “great divisions among humankind and
the dominating source of conflict will be cultural”.

He divides the world’s cultures into seven current civilizations, Western, Latin America,
Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, and Slavic-Orthodox, plus Africa to the extent that
an African consciousness develops.
SUBSIDIZING CULTURE

The Baumol Cost Disease:

- Whilst technological improvements benefit the arts in some ways, it still takes
four musicians to play a Beethoven string quartet, even if other sectors of the
economy have experienced massive productivity gains.
- It is this relatively slow productivity growth that two economists, Baumol and
Bowen, coined as “Cost Disease”.
- William Baumol has argued for over forty years that the arts require
subsidization in order to offset the impact of cost disease, otherwise the arts
will become amateur activity to the detriment of society.
- Basically there are sectors that experience rapid productivity growth and other
sectors that experience slow productivity growth. The sectors that experience
slow productivity growth tend to persist in that.
- Put another way, those sectors that experience low productivity growth,
including the arts (as well as healthcare and education) continue to experience
low productivity growth and will not catch up with those that have grown
faster.
- The characteristic that links healthcare, education, and the arts is their inherent
labor intensity and as such they experience slow productivity growth compared
to other industries.
- Unlike other industries, the impact of technology and automation processes is
therefore much more limited, thus the slow productivity growth.
- Because other sectors wages will rise naturally (as productivity increases) and
in order to maintain relative purchasing power of employees the arts are
paying higher wages in spite of low or no productivity gains.
- Musicians’ salaries are increased not due to labor productivity increases in the
music industry, but rather due to productivity and wage increases in other
industries.
- Whilst industries can improve their productivity in line with market rates (or at
 least in line with inflation) in order to not suffer when margins get squeezed,
the arts have to absorb the additional costs or simply go without.
- More concerning is that productivity gains in the arts might not keep pace with
inflation, meaning that their real value is eroded over time, or rather that
wages have to grow at a faster rate than the productivity of each worker,
inflating the cost base within the art.

But technology has brought cost savings to the arts, for example, the recording costs
for an album have fallen. Should that not speak against the Baumol cost disease?

The Baumol Cost Disease:

- Baumol acknowledges this point, but argues that these developments delay the
impact of cost disease rather than offering a cure. He adds that streamlining of
technological costs serves to exaggerate the additional cost of human input.
- By means of illustration, if it previously cost $30,000 in equipment costs, and
$30,000 in labor costs, the reduction in equipment costs to, say, $10,000
means that labor now accounts for 75% of the total costs, not 50%. Whilst the
total cost has fallen, the relative cost of additional human input, thinking of our
strings section, increases to the detriment of the art.
- William Baumol has argued for over 40 years that the arts required
subsidization in order to offset the impact of cost disease and that the arts
would become amateur activities otherwise, to the loss of society. Of our
strings section, increases to the detriment of the art.

SESSION 12
MUSIC IN PUBLIC SPACES
MUSIC CITIES

A thriving music scene generates a wide array of benefits for cities, from economic
impacts to cultural development. Key benefits include:

- Economic impact
- Music tourism
- City brand building
- Cultural development and artistic growth
- Attracting and retaining talent and investment outside of the music industry
- Strengthening the social fabric, and validating music as a respected and
legitimate industry

HOW TO MAKE A SCENE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u0G2SyCJkw
 - There must be one or several venues of appropriate size and location in which
to present new material.
- Artists are allowed to play new material.
- Venues should become regular hang-outs for musicians.
- Sense of alienation from the prevailing music scene.
- Low rents.
- Bands must get paid fairly.
- Possibility to ignore the band when necessary.

MUSIC CLUSTERS

THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE

Taipei as an Example of Music Cluster

“Over 80% of Chinese pop music songs were originally created in Taiwan” (Robin Lee,
Chief of Taiwan’s IFPI).

“For success in China, you have to get onto the Taiwanese charts and then it will sell.
Young people in China are very keen to follow the media in Taiwan. The formula is
simple: Make an artist big in Taiwan and they will automatically be big in China.” (Yao
Chien, Music Lyricist).

- Historical and Political Background of Taiwan:

o Culturally, part of China, politically, and independent state.
o Japanese colony (1895 – 1945), long period of KMT rule, strong links
with the US after WWII.
- Economic Factors:
o Local market of 25 million people market
o High purchasing power (GDP per capita: $39,600).
- The Importance of Chinese:
o Taiwanese music consumed in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore
and Malaysia.
o Strong connection with American Born Chinese.
- The importance of Self-Awareness and eventually Government Support.
- Why is a cluster important:
o Music production greatly depends on collective coordination of
innovation.
o The buzz effect.
o Address cultural-economic tensions.
o Moqi.
o Network economics.
o Cultivation Process (you have to be in the circle)
o Quick obtention of Market Information (Consumer Tastes)

MUSIC TOURISM

- Austin
- New Orleans
- Nashville
- David Cameron, UK’s Prime Minister: “Music is an industry that is an
international success story and we should go on backing it. It’s not just the
exports that it provides for this country, it’s the massive and growing music
tourism, people coming to Britain to listen to great acts.

Findings of UK Music’s Wish You Were Here Report 2014:

- Direct spend by music tourists – buying tickets, paying for transport and
accommodation – was worth $1.9 billion.
- Further indirect music tourism spends – additional spending along the supply
chain generated by music tourists – adds a further $1.2 bn, making a total
spend of $3.1bn.
- The average live music audience is comprised of 45% music tourists.
- Music tourists from overseas spend, on average, $751.

Ontario Music Fund

The Ontario Music Fund (OMF), administered by the Ontario Music Office (OMO), is
aimed at strengthening and stimulating growth in Ontario’s music companies and
supporting this sector.

The Live Music stream of the Ontario Music Fund is intended to increase the number
and quality of live music experiences enjoyed by residents in and visitors to Ontario at
events, festivals and concerts featuring Canadian artists.

Funding is available and successful applicants are eligible to receive up to CAD

$500,000 (CAD $250,000 maximum per category) on an annual basis.

http://www.omdc.on.ca/music/the_ontario_music_fund/music_industry_
development.htm

- Primavera Sound has an economic impact on the city of Barcelona of 95€

million, due to 130.000 hotel room bookings and 1,600 jobs.
- BBK Live has an impact on the city of Bilbao of 20 million. 89% of hotel rooms
are booked during the festival.
 SESSION 13
POPULAR MUSIC

Minstrel Shows

- The minstrel show, the first form of musical and theatrical entertainment to be
regarded by European audiences as distinctively American in character,
featured mainly white performers who blackened their skin and carried out
parodies of African-American music, dance, dress, and dialect.
- Minstrelsy arose during the 1830s as an expression of a predominantly white
urban youth culture, which sought to express its independence by
appropriating black style. As minstrelsy became a mass phenomenon in the
decades just before and after the American Civil War, its form became
routinized, and its portrayal of black characters more rigidly stereotyped.
- This basic pattern, in which a new genre of music arises within a marginalized
community and then moves into the mainstream of mass popular culture, in
the process losing much of its original rebellious energy, will be encountered
many times in the history of American pop culture.

Brass Band Music

- From the Civil War through the 1910s, brass band concerts were one of the
most important musical aspects of American life.
- By 1889 there were over 10,000 brass bands in the US.
- The brass-band movement drew energy from the interaction of patriotism and
popular culture, and from the growing force of American nationalism.
- The most popular bandleader from the 1890s through World War I was John
Philip Sousa (1854-19329).
- Souse conducted the US Marine Band and later formed a “commercial” concert
band. This band made two dozen hit phonograph recordings between 1895 and
 1918.
- Souse was one of the first musicians to negotiate royalty payments with
publishers, and an important advocate of copyright reform.

Tin Pan Alley

- The established publishers, who had made their fortunes in classical music and
genteel parlor songs, were, from around 1885 on, challenged by smaller
companies specializing in the more exciting popular songs performed in dance
halls, beer gardens, and theaters.
- These new publishing firms had offices along a stretch of Manhattan’s 28th
Street that became known as “Tin Pan Alley”, a term that evoked the clanging
sound of many pianos simultaneously playing songs in a variety of keys and
tempos.
- The 1890s saw the rise of the modern American music business, an industry
that aimed to provide “hits” for an expanding urban mass market. For the first
time, a single song could sell more than a million copies.
- By the turn of the century vaudeville, a popular theatrical form descended
from music hall shows and minstrelsy, had become the most important
medium for popularizing Tin Pan Alley songs.
- Vaudeville shows consisted of a series of performances – singers, acrobats,
comedians, jugglers, dancers, animal acts, and so on. Every city had at least one
vaudeville theater.
- Tin Pan Alley songs dominated the American music industry for almost 70
years. The romantic parlor song remained popular, as did “Irish” and waltz
songs. Plantation songs, descended from the minstrel song tradition, were also
popular.

Ragtime

- This same period saw the intensification of African-American musical influence,

a trend best represented by ragtime. Ragtime emerged in the 1880s, its
popularity peaking in the decade after the turn of the century.
- In some regards, the ragtime craze was a descendant of minstrelsy, but the
ragtime style also represented a more intimate engagement with African-
American musical techniques and values, due to the increasing involvement of
black songwriters and performers in the music industry.
- During the height of its popularity, from the late 1890s until the end of World
War I, ragtime music was played by every imaginable type of ensemble: dance
bands, brass bands, country string bands, symphony orchestras, banjo and
mandolin ensembles, and, in the classic ragtime style, by solo pianists.
- The growing market for ragtime songs at the turn of the century suggests a
continuation of the white fascination with African-American music first
evinced in minstrelsy.
- Tin Pan Alley composers simply added syncopated rhythms and ersatz black
dialects to spice up bland popular tunes. The idea was to create songs novel
enough to stimulate the audience’s interest but not so radical that they
required a great deal of work on the listener’s part.
 - Just as the songs performed by blackface minstrels were European in style,
most popular ragtime songs were march-style songs with “irregular” rhythms
added for effect.
- Some young white Americans associated themselves with ragtime to rebel
against the cultural conservatism of their parents and other authority figures, a
pattern that became even more prominent during the jazz age of the 1920s
and the rock ‘n’ roll era of the 1950s.

Jazz

- Jazz’s attraction as a symbol of sensuality, freedom, and fun does appear to

have transcended the boundaries of region, ethnicity, and class, creating a
precedent for phenomena such as the swing era, rhythm & blues, and rock ‘n’
roll.
- Jazz emerged in New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1900. New Orleans’ position
as a gateway between the United Stated and the Caribbean, its socially
stratified population, and its strong residues of colonial French culture,
encouraged the formation of a hybrid musical culture unlike that in any other
American city.
- Jazz emerged from the confluence of New Orleans’ diverse musical traditions,
including ragtime, marching bands, the rhythms used in Mardi Gras and
funerary processions, French and Italian opera, Caribbean and Mexican
music, Tin Pan Alley songs, and African-American song traditions, both sacred
(the spirituals) and secular (the blues).
- Louis Armstrong is commonly credited with establishing certain core features
of jazz – particularly its rhythmic drive or swing and its emphasis on solo
instrumental virtuosity. Armstrong also profoundly influenced the development
of mainstream popular singing during the 1920s and 1930s.
- Armstrong emerged as an influential musician on the local scene in the years
following World War I, and subsequently migrated to Chicago to join the band
of his mentor King (Joe) Oliver, playing on what are regarded by many critics as
the first real jazz records.
- In 1924 Armstrong joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in New York City, pushing
the band in the direction of a hotter, more improvisatory style that helped to
create the synthesis of jazz and ballroom dance music that would later be
called swing.
- By the 1930s Armstrong was the best-known black musician in the world, as a
result of his recordings and film and radio appearances.

The Jazz Age

- Although jazz was initially regarded by the music industry as a passing fad, its
impact on the popular music mainstream represented an important cultural
shift. A new subculture emerged from the white upper and middle classes,
symbolized by the “jazz babies” or “flappers” (emancipated young women with
short skirts and bobbed hair) and “jazzbos” or “sheiks” (young men whose cool
yet sensual comportment was modeled on the film star Rudolph Valentino).
- The jazz craze represented the intensification of African-American influence
 on the musical tastes and buying habits of white Americans.
- While it did increase opportunities for some black musicians, the world of
dance orchestras remained strictly segregated. African-American musicians
appeared with increasing frequency in fancy downtown cabarets and hotel
ballrooms (although they could enter these places only as employees, not
customers).
- In New York’s Harlem and the South Side of Chicago, these “black and tan”
cabarets offered their predominantly white clientele an array of jazz music.
- Beginning in 1935, a new style of jazz-inspired music called “swing”, initially
developed in the late 1920s by black dance bands in NY, Chicago, and Kansas
City, transformed American popular music.
- The word “swing” (like “jazz, blues, and rock ‘n’roll”) derives from African-
American English. First used as a verb for the fluid, “rocking” rhythmic
momentum created by well-played music, the term was used by extension to
refer to an emotional state characterized by a sense of freedom, vitality, and
enjoyment.
- The basic ethos of swing music was one of unfettered enjoyment, “swinging”,
“having a ball”.
- For the swing era, the mythic “founding moment” occurred in the summer of
1935, when a dance band led by a young jazz clarinetist named Benny
Goodman (1909 – 1986) embarked on a tour of California.
- Another prominent swing era band was the Duke Ellington Orchestra, led by
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899 – 1974), widely regarded as one of the
most important American musicians of the 20th century.
- A third leading swing band was that of Glenn Miller (1904 – 1944). From 1939
until 1942 the Miller Orchestra was the most popular dance band in the world,
breaking record sales and concert attendance records. The Miller band marked
the apex of the swing era, racking up 23 Number-One recordings in a little
under four years.

Crooners

- Crooners are male singers of jazz standards, mostly from the Great American
Songbook, either backed by a full orchestra, a big band or by a piano. Originally
it was an ironic term denoting an emphatically sentimental, often emotional
singing style made possible by the use of microphones.
- Some performers, such as Russ Colombo, did not accept the term: in an
interview Frank Sinatra said that he did not consider himself or Bing Crosby
“crooners”.
- This dominant popular vocal style coincided with the advent of radio
broadcasting and electrical recording. Before the advent of the microphone,
popular singers like Al Jolson had to project to the rear seats of a theater, as
did opera singers, which made for a very loud vocal style. The microphone
made possible the more personal style.
- Al Bowlly, Gene Austin and Art Gillham are often credited as investors of the
crooning style but Rudy Vallée became far more popular, beginning from 1928.
He could be heard by anyone with a phonograph or a radio.
Race and Hillbilly Music

- The music industry’s discovery of black music (and southern music in general)
can be traced to a set of recordings made in 1920, featuring the black
vaudeville performer Mamie Smith (1883 – 1946) for the Okeh Recorded
Company.
- The promotional catchphrase “race music” might sound derogatory today, but
the term “race” was used in a positive sense in urban African-American
communities during the 1920s and was an early example of black nationalism.
- The performances released on race records included a variety of musical styles
– blues, jazz, gospel choirs, vocal quartets, string bands, and jug-and-
washboard bands – as well as oral performances such as sermons, stories, and
comic routines.
- Not all recordings featuring African-American artists were automatically
classified as race records. For example, recordings by black dance orchestras or
jazz bands with a substantial white audience were listed in the mainstream pop
record catalogs.
- The emergence of race records set a pattern that has been repeated many
times in the history of American popular music, in which talented
entrepreneurs, often connected with small, independent record labels, take the
lead in exploring and promoting music outside the commercial mainstream.
- The 1920s also saw the emergence of African-American-owned record
companies, like Black Swan.
- “Hillbilly music”, later rechristened “country and western music” or simply
“country music”, developed mainly out of the folk songs, ballads, and dance
music of immigrants from the British Isles.
- The first commercially successful hillbilly record, featuring a north Georgia
musician named Fiddlin’ John Carson, was made by Okeh Records in 1923
during a recording expedition to Atlanta, actually aimed at locating new
material for the race record market.
- In 1924 Vernon Dalhart recorded “The Prisoner’s Song”, the first bug hillbilly
hit, a million-seller that contributed to the success of the fledgling country
music industry.

Rhythm and Blues

- The top R&B recordings of the late 1940s and early 1950s included swing-
influenced “jump bands”, Tin Pan Alley-style love songs performed by crooners,
various styles of urban blues, and gospel-influenced vocal harmony groups.
- The reappearance of small independent record labels provided an outlet for
performers who were ignored by major record companies. By 1951 there were
over 100 independent labels slugging it out for a piece of the R&B market.
- Jump blues, the first commercially successful category of rhythm & blues,
flourished during and just after WWII. During the war, as shortages made it
more difficult to maintain a lucrative touring schedule, the leaders of some big
bands were forced to downsize. They formed smaller combos, generally made
up of a rhythm, section and horn players.
- These jump bands specialized in hard-swinging, boogie-woogie-based party
 music, spiced with humorous lyrics and wild stage performances.
- The most successful and influential jump band was the Tympany Five, led by
Louis Jordan.
- The cool end was dominated by a blend of blues and pop singing sometimes
called the blues crooner style.
- The late 1930s jazz recordings of the King Cole Trio, with its instrumentation of
piano, bass, and guitar, were a more immediate influence on postwar blues
crooners, although Cole’s later recordings took him well into the pop
mainstream.
- The most successful blues crooner of the late 1940s and early 1950s was a soft-
spoken Texas-born pianist and singer named Charles Brown.
- A very different urban blues tradition of the postwar era, Chicago electric blues,
derived more directly from the Mississippi Delta tradition of Charley Patton and
Robert Johnson.
- Chicago was the terminus of the Illinois Central railroad line, which ran up
through the Midwest from the Mississippi Delta. Millions of rural migrants
came north in search of employment in the city’s industrial plants, railroad
shops, and slaughterhouses.
- The South Side’s nightclubs were the center of a lively black music scene that
rivaled New York’s Harlem and LA’s Central Avenue.
- The music taste of black Chicagoans, many of them recent migrants from the
Deep South, tended toward rougher, grittier styles, closely linked to African-
American folk traditions but also reflective of their new, urban orientation.
Chicago electric blues was a response to these demands.
- The mid-1930s recordings of Robert Johnson represent the final flowering of
the Delta blues.
- Many bluesmen, like Muddy Waters, re-discovered the Mississippi Delta
through the folk music scholars John and Alan Lomax, who recorded him in the
late 1930s for the Library of Congress.
- In response to the noisy crowds, and to the demand for dance music, Waters
soon switched from the acoustic to the electric guitar (1944) and eventually
expanded his group to include a second electric guitar, piano, bass, amplified
harmonica, and drum set.
- During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was the most popular blues musician
in Chicago, with a sizeable following among black listeners nationwilde.

Rock ‘n’ Roll

- The advent of rock ‘n’ roll music in the mid-1950s brought enormous changes
to American popular music, changes whose impact is still being felt.
- Styles that had remained on the margins of pop music began to infiltrate and
eventually dominate the center. Rhythm & Blues and country music recordings
were no longer directed to specialized and regionalized markets; they began to
be heard on mainstream pop radio, and many could be purchased in music
stores nationwide.
- The new audience was dominated by the so-called baby boom generation born
immediately following World War II. It was a much younger target group than
ever before, a large audience that shared specific characteristics of group
 cultural identity.
- These were kids growing up in the 1950s, a period of relative economic
stability and prosperity marked by a return to socially and politically
conservative ways.
- This was also the first generation to grow up with television; this new mass
medium proved a force of incalculable influence.
- The purchase of rock ‘n’ roll records by kids in the 1950s proved a way of
asserting their generational identity through rebellion against adult standards
and restrictions.
- Thus the experience of growing up with rock ‘n’ roll music became a defining
characteristic of the baby boom generation.
- The term “rock ‘n’ roll” was first used for commercial and generational
purposes by disc jockey Alan Freed.
- In the early 1950s Freed discovered that increasing numbers of young white
kids were listening to and requesting the rhythm & blues records he played on
his nighttime program in Cleveland – records he began to call “rock ‘n’ roll”.
- Three prominent African-Americans represent the rhythm & blues-based side
of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s: Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino.
- All three crossed over to mainstream success within the first few months
following the massive success of the white rocker Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the
Clock”.
- In 1955, RCA Victor, a major label, set about trying to turn Elvis Presley, a
“hillbilly cat”, into a mainstream performer without compromising the strength
of his appeal to teenagers. They succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.
- Although Presley’s television performances were denounced by authorities as
vulgar, the shows were attended by hordes of screaming young fans and
admired on the screen by millions.
- Presley’s records racked up astronomical sales from 1956 on into the early
1960s, establishing him as the biggest-selling solo artist of rock ‘n’ roll, and
then as the biggest-selling solo recording artist of any period and style.
- Few eras in American history have been as controversial as the 1960s, a period
marked by the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the
assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther
King Jr.
- Popular music played an incontestable role in defining the character and spirit
of the 1960s. The baby boom generation played a vital role in the political and
cultural events of this period, and the boomers were a generation identified
with rock ‘n’ roll.

Three important trends emerged in the early 1960s:

- A new kind of social dancing, inspired by “The Twist”, gave rock ‘n’ roll music a
distinctive set of movements and social customs.
- Members of the first generation to grow up with rock ‘n’ roll began to assume
positions of shaping power in the music industry.
- And new stylistic possibilities for rock ‘n’ roll began to emerge out of
California, spearheaded by the Beach Boys.
Motown

- Motown came to be one of the most stunning African-American business

success stories. The intensity and duration of Motown’s commercial success
reflected the distinctive dual thrust of Berry Gordy’s vision.
- Gordy was determined to keep all of the creative and financial aspects of the
business under African-American control.
- However, Motown’s music was not directed primarily at black audiences.
- Motown had 110 top 10 songs in the 1960s with legendary artists like Stevie
Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Temptations, The
Jackson 5, etc.
- Most of Motown’s hits were recorded with studio musicians nicknamed The
Funk Brothers.

Stax Records

- Motown’s main rival was Memphis based Stax Records.

- Like Motown it relied heavily in session musicians, albeit with a steady
formation: Booker T. & The M.G.’s.
- It scored hits with artists such as Otis Reding, Sam and Dave, Albert King, etc.
Also Atlantic Records’ stars like Wilson Picket recorded hit songs under the Stax
umbrella.
- Stax Records was also an escape from the turmoil of segregated Memphis,
particularly after Dr. King’s assassination.

Soul Music

- Although the term “soul music” would not enter the common vocabulary until
the later 1960s, it is clearly soul music that Ray Charles was pioneering in his
gospel-blues synthesis of the 1950s.
- He is now widely acknowledged as the first important soul artist, and his work
proved an incalculable influence on James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Curtis
Mayfield, Otis Redding, Sly Stone, and innumerable others.

Counterculture and Psychedelic Rock

- The explosive entrance of folk rock into the wide arena of American popular
culture coincided with the development of increasingly innovative approaches
to rock ‘n’ roll itself.
- This was a period of increasing political restlessness and ferment in the United
States.
- During the late 1960s an “alternative” rock music scene established itself in San
Francisco. The city had long been a center for artistic communities and
subcultures, including the “beat” literary movement of the 1950s, a lively urban
folk music scene, and a highly visible and vocal gay community. “Psychedelic
rock” encompassed a variety of styles and musical influences, including folk
rock, blues, hard rock, Latin music, and Indian classical music.
- Along with the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Grateful Dead, Jefferson
Airplane was one of the original triumvirate of San Francisco “acid rock” bands.
 - Grace Slick’s only serious competition as queen of the San Francisco rock scene
came from Janis Joplin (1943-70), the most successful white blues singer of the
1960s.

The British Invasion

- The rebellious tone and image of US rock ‘n’ roll and blues musicians had
become popular with British youth in the late 1950s.
- Young British groups started to combine various British and American styles in
different parts of the UK, notably Liverpool.
- By 1963 news of the frenzy surrounding The Beatles in the UK had reached the
US. When DJ Carroll James played “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in December
that year in DC, area record stores were flooded with requests for a record they
did not have in stock.
- In February 1964 The Beatles visited the US and appeared on The Ed Sullivan
Show. 45% of US TV viewers that night saw their appearance.
- During the next two years The Animals, Petula Clark, Herman’s Hermits, The
Rolling Stones and many others would have one or more number one singles in
the US.
- Other Invasion acts included Van Morrison, Tom Jones, The Yardbirds, The
Spencer Davis Group and The Kinks, and later on The Who, Cream and other
Eric Clapton projects (Derek & the Dominos), and Led Zeppelin.

Folk Music

- Beginning in the early 1950s a genre of popular music called “urban folk” began
to appear on the top charts. Artists like the Weavers and their leader Pete
Seeger, and, a few years later, the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary
mated political protest themes and an urban intellectual sensibility to a musical
style inspired by rural folk music.
- Urban folk continued to flourish during the early days of rock ‘n’ roll and into
the 1960s. but by 1967 electric instruments and drums had joined Peter, Paul,
and Mary’s acoustic guitars, and the well-known folk group was in the pop Top
10 singing “I Dig Rock’n’Roll Music”!
- The individual responsible for this shift was the man who had written their
biggest acoustic hit, “Blowin’ in the Wind”. He was also the man who, virtually
single-handedly, dragged urban folk music into the modern era of rock. His
name was Bob Dylan.

Guitar Heroes

- The 1960s saw the rise of a new generation of electric guitarists who
functioned as cultural heroes for their young fans. Their achievements were
built on the shoulders of previous generations of electric guitar virtuosos – Les
Paul, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters and B. B. King, and early masters of rock
‘n’ roll guitar, including Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly.
- Beginning in the mid-1960s, the new guitarists – including Jimi Hendrix, Eric
Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and the Beatles’ George Harrison – took these
 influences and pushed them farther than ever before in terms of technique,
sheer volume, and improvisational brilliance.

The 1970s

- For many people, Disco is the genre of music most readily associated with the
1970s. first appearing in dance clubs in the early part of the decade,
sonstresses Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and Anita Ward in the US and
Dalida in Europe popularized the genre.
- Also, The Bee Gees soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever became one of the best
selling albums of all times.
- The 1970s also saw the emergence of hard rock with bands such as Alice
Cooper, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Black Sabbath, etc.
- By the second half of the decade, many others bands had also achieved
stardom, namely AC/DC, Kiss, Aerosmith, etc.
- Country rock and Southern rock also enjoyed popularity with bands such as
Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band, and notably The Eagles, one of the
best selling bands of all time.
- Punk rock emerged under a DIY ethic using short or fast-paced songs, stripped
down instrumentation and anti-establishment lyrics. The most prominent
examples were The Sex Pistols and The Clash the in the UK and The Ramones,
Blondie and The New York Dolls.
- Along with Disco, funk was one of the most popular genres in the 1970s.
- Artists such as James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Earth,
Wind & Fire, etc.
- One of the biggest pop-music phenomena of the 1970s, playing a repertoire of
R&B, soul, pop and later disco were The Jackson 5.
- Also reggae music, thanks to the influence of Bob Marley reached mainstream
commercial success world-wide.
- Finally, certain European pop stars reached stardom in the 1970s, notably
Elton John, arguably the decade’s biggest pop star, and ABBA.

Hip-Hop

- Rap initially emerged during the 1970s as one part of a cultural complex called
hip-hop. Hip-hop culture, forged by African-American and Caribbean-American
youth in NYC, included distinctive styles of visual art (graffiti, dance (an
acrobatic solo style called breakdancing and an energetic couple dance called
the freak), music, dress, and speech.
- Hip-hop was at first a local phenomenon, centered in certain neighborhoods in
the Bronx, the most economically disadvantaged area of NYC.
- Until 1979 hip-hop music remained primarily a local phenomenon with
pioneers such as Kool Herc in The Bronx. The first indication of the genre’s
broader commercial potential was the 12-inch dance single “Rapper’s Delight”,
recorded by the Sugarhill Gang, a crew based in Harlem.
- This record, which popularized the use of the term “rapper” as an equivalent
for MC, established Sugar Hill Records – a black-owned independent label
based in New Jersey – as the predominant institutional force in rap music
 during the early 1980s.
- The release of Public Enemy’s second album in 1988 – It Taked a Nation of
Millions to Hold Us Back – was a break through event for rap music.
- During the 1990s, a number of important rap artists achieved mainstream
success, among them M.C. Hammer, whose Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em,
held the Number One position for 21 weeks and sold over 10 million copies,
becoming the bestselling rap album of all time.
- In the 2000 artists like Snoop Dog, Jay Z, Eminem, Lil’Wayne and 50 Cents took
the baton.
- Today, rap music and hip-hop culture continue to influence and inspire
musicians and audiences around the world, thanks in part to the influence of
people like Jay Z, Sean Combs and Kanye West, who managed to established
themselves as elite artists and businessmen.

1980s

- The 1980s saw the emergence of pop, dance music and new wave.
- It saw the reinvention of Michael Jackson, the stardom of Prince and the
emergence of Madonna, Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson, thanks to the
influence of music videos.
- The second half of the decade saw the resurgence of hard rock music with
bands like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Scorpions, Van Halen and,
above all, Guns n’ Roses.
- Heavy Metal also became mainstream with bands like Judas Priest, Iron
Maiden in the UK and later Metallica and Megadeath in the US.
- A second invasion from the British Isles took place in the 1980s with bands like
The Smiths, The Cure, and most notably Dire Straits, The Police and U2.
- The 1980s also saw the appearance of alternative rock as an underground
phenomenon with bands like REM, Violent Femmes, etc.

1990s

- In the 1990s hip hop reached its golden age with acts like Dr. Dre, The
Notorious Big, Lauryn Hill, 2Pac, etc.
- With the breakthrough of bands such as Nirvana and the popularity of grunge
and Britpop movements (Oasis, Blur), alternative rock entered the musical
mainstream, with bands such as Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Jane’s Addiction,
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
- Hard rock continued to be successful in the first half of the decade with bands
like Guns n’ Roses, Metallica and the come-back Aerosmith.
- Another important element of the 1990s music scene is the invasion of teen
pop, with boy and girl bands (The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Britney
Spears, etc.)
- Finally, the 1990s saw the explosion of electronic music (Dr. Alban, 2 Unlimited,
Culture Beat, etc.)

MAIN HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

1880 – 1920

- Recording technology is developed

- Music publishers dominate the business, notably Tin Pan Alley Publishers.
- The phonographic industry is focused more on selling hardware (phonographs)
than software (recordings) until the first major hits changes the trend (e.g.
Enrico Caruso).
- There is a boom in sales.
- 1909 Copyright Act introduces the mechanical rights for copyright owners of
musical compositions.
- 1914 ASCAP is created.

1920 – 1945

- Two majors: RCA and Columbia and a number of indie labels (e.g. Okeh, Black
Swan).
- Radio and sound movies arrive
- In 1921, US record sales reached a historic high of $106 million. This figure was
not exceeded until 1945 when it reached $109 million.
- During this time period, the phonographic industry experienced a steady sales
decline between 1921 and 1925.
- From 1925 through 1929, sales boomed for a last time before the market crash
of 1929 initiated a drastic decline that reached its lowest point in 1933 with
only $6 million in sales.
- After 1934, the phonographic market began to recover slightly.
- In the US, which entered the WWII in December 1941, the phonographic
industry experienced a new boom. Between 1938 and 1939, record sales
increased by 69% (from $26 million to $44 million), in 1940 by another 9% (to
$48 million), and in 1941 by 6% (to $51 million). However, with the US entry
into the war, the record industry was cut off from crucially needed Shellac
imports from India. This lack of raw materials led the majors to limit production
exclusively to mainstream music. Race and Hillbilly was no longer recorded.
- Propelled forward by the broadcasting production logic, Swing was able to
develop and maintain a dominant market position for roughly 20 years
between 1935 and 1955.
- BMI is created in 1940 during a conflict between radio stations and ASCAP. BMI
was more open to accept songwriters of “race” music as members.

1945 – 1960

- A full-fledged music industry boom characterized the immediate post-war years

in the US.
- The LP is introduced (cheaper to produce, increased storage capacity).
- Magnetic tape is also introduced.
- The US music oligopoly comes to an end. Indie labels start to mushroom.
- Radio programming introduces audience segmentation.
- R&B gives way to rick n’ roll.
1960 – 1969

- The majors’ growth rate was surpassed by that of the independent labels. In
1962, the US music industry reached its lowest level of market concentration.
- The majors were initially put on the defensive due to the increased volatility of
the market as a result of the symbiotic relationship between independent radio
stations and record labels and their mutual efforts to promote rock n’ roll.
- Once the economic potential of the new music was impossible to ignore and
their market shares plummeted at a dangerous rate, the majors gradually, and
often reluctantly, began to sign Rock musicians.

PLANET ALIGNMENT IN THE 1960’s

A combination of factors explain the boom of rock music in the 1960s:

- Great talent
- The baby boom generation is in its late teens, early 20s.
- Music became the means of expression of a generation.
- The lyrics of songs became more sexually explicit and with more meaningful
messages.
- The British Invasion.
- It was easy and cheap to start up a label (oil was cheap, records could be sent
on consignment).
- Many visionary music entrepreneurs.
- The explosion of record cover art.

MAIN HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

1970 – 1979

- The recorded music market becomes more and more concentrated due to
mergers and acquisitions.
- Sales decrease at the end of the decade for the first time in 40 years.
- The declining record sales of the late 1970s and the stagnation during the first
half of the 1980s is often explained by the worldwide recession after the
second oil crisis, as well as the emergence of music cassettes that enabled
private copying.
- Some commentators claim that the economic decline of the music industry at
the end of the 1970s was also due to the lack of technological innovations and
to the lack of courage to embrace artistic innovations.

1980 – 1989

- Sales start growing again thanks to:

o MTV and music video
o CD
o Portable devices
- A second merger mania starts in 1985.
1990 – 2005